For I maintain that there are no small feats of arms, but only good and great ones, although some feats of arms are of greater worth than others. Therefore, I say that he who does more is of greater worth.
The Livre de Chevalerie or Book of Chivalry1 is a 14th century treatise by the knight Geoffroi de Charny to provide philosophical grounding for the new French Ordre de l’Étoile - a chivalric order2 that he was a part of.
Geoffroi attempts to explain how a knight should be chivalrous - in particular focusing on them being really bold and skilled and not getting fat or lazy. He prescribes being almost monastic in behavior (and thinks this practice of being both daring and aesthetic is particularly noble and holy). It’s an interesting look into the self-justifications of knighthood at the time.
Footnotes
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Styled as A Knight’s Own Book of Chivalry by the translation I used. ↩
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That is, a society of knighthood - meant to encourage chivalrous actions in a kind of Rotary Club way - and also usually an inflation of honorifics and ceremonies. This particular one kind of flopped. ↩